Apple CEO Defends Privacy Tools Despite Facebook Objections

A day after Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg told investors Apple poses a growing threat to its business, the iPhone maker reiterated its intent to give users the option to limit how apps track their digital footprints.

Apple users early this spring will see the new feature, which will allow ad tracking only if consumers opt in once they receive a prompt on an iPhone or iPad. (A beta version will be coming sooner for test users.) The software update to its mobile operating system would make it so that Facebook or other companies would no longer be able to collect a person’s advertising identifier without permission.

Data privacy day “comes at a time of great challenge, underscoring the critical role privacy and security play in our lives—from safeguarding your health & financial data to guarding against algorithms that perpetuate rampant misinformation,” he said on Twitter before the speech. “We need transparency and reform.”

Mr. Zuckerberg, whose company has been sued by the Federal Trade Commission and 46 states over anticompetitive claims, sought to cast Apple’s privacy moves as a means to use its platform to put Facebook at a disadvantage. Apple, too, has faced claims from tech rivals that its practices are anticompetitive. Both tech giants have denied wrongdoing.

“Apple has every incentive to use their dominant platform position to interfere with how our apps and other apps work, which they regularly do to preference their own,” he said. Apple didn’t respond to a request for comment on Mr. Zuckerberg’s statement.

Late Wednesday, the spring timeline for implementing the new privacy features was included in a new report online by Apple that aimed to detail how personal data is harvested and commercialized by third parties.

The coming change is part of a continuum of features Apple has added over the years aimed at improving and protecting user privacy. For example, the iPhone asks a user to give permission to apps wanting to use the device’s microphone, such as when Skype is used.

Apple’s ad identifier is a string of numbers widely used by digital ad and data brokers that can be used to reveal where users go online, insight that is useful for targeting ads.

Some in the app industry are worried that the opt-in requirement will lead many users to reject the request, resulting in the collapse of ad prices and creating new challenges for small businesses trying to reach a targeted audience effectively.

A Tap Research Inc. survey found 85% of respondents said they wouldn’t allow an app to track them if given the choice.

Amid pushback, Apple in September announced it was delaying the privacy change until early this year from last fall to allow developers time to make necessary changes. The feature was announced last June.

Write to Tim Higgins at [email protected]